Report: The Lakers Are ‘Drilling Down’ On JJ Redick As Their Coaching Search Heats Up

The Los Angeles Lakers’ offseason began sooner than they hoped after being taken down in five games by the Denver Nuggets in the first round.

The Lakers didn’t take long after that loss to make a major change, announcing they were moving on from head coach Darvin Ham after two seasons. The question was who the Lakers would be able to bring in to replace Ham, particularly considering the Lakers have never been particularly keen on paying top dollar for coaches. With the Suns confirming the market for a coach with championship experience is $10 million per year with the hire of Mike Budenholzer, the Lakers seem likely to look at candidates with less experience, the assistant coaching pool, or even no experience at all.

One name that’s been connected to the Lakers opening from the jump is JJ Redick, as the former player turned ESPN analyst and podcast host has made no secret his desire to get into coaching. Redick hosting a podcast with LeBron James has only fueled the rumblings that he’s a serious candidate for the L.A. job, and on Saturday night we got further confirmation the Lakers are looking at him very seriously in a report from Adrian Wojnarowski.

“One name that the Lakers have been drilling down on in their initial research here, JJ Redick. He is certainly somebody that the Lakers are intrigued with, they’ve been making a lot of calls to try and learn more about him. But expect this to be a wide-ranging and lengthy search for L.A.”

As Woj notes, the Lakers are expected to take their time on this search and interview plenty of candidates, but they will do plenty of due diligence on Redick as part of the process. Given his lack of any NBA coaching experience, those conversations with Redick and those that know him will be of particular importance to figuring out if he’s ready to take on a very unique challenge of coaching this Lakers team.